Air India may have to pay $8.8 million to passengers because it followed rules

• An Air India flight carrying 323 passengers was due to land in Chicago but because of bad weather, it was diverted to Milwaukee.
• The flight could have gone back to Chicago in two hours but a strict flight duty time limitation (FDTL) of the crew rule left passengers stuck inside the plane for over 28 hours.
• Air India was also slapped with a $8.8 million penalty fee for 'tarmac delay'.

Flight delays are inarguably frustrating, and passengers are quick, and perhaps rightly so, to blame the airline - but there are times when the airline is not entirely at fault. One such incident happened on 09 May when a Chicago-bound, 16-hour Air India flight from New Delhi landed six hours late because of a rule that had no room for accommodating ‘relaxations’.

The flight carrying 323 passengers was due to land in Chicago but because of bad weather, it was diverted to Milwaukee airport, just 19 minutes flight time away. Ideally, the flight could have flown back to Chicago after two hours but a recent mandate by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said that regardless of circumstances, there would be no relaxation of the flight duty time limitation (FDTL) of the crew rule. So basically, the Air India crew that was servicing the flight has to be relieved and a fresh crew had to be driven in from Chicago to take over.

Needless to say, this caused the unwarranted six-hour delay but passenger woes did not end there. The passengers were not allowed to get off the plane since the Milwaukee airport that was overburdened by a number of diverted flights had no gates available for the passengers to disembark. Among the passengers were a number of wheelchair-bound people, infants and an autistic child who was on her first flight. This kid had to seek medical attention at the Milwaukee airport. By the time the flight reached its final destination, the passengers were inside the flight for over 28 hours in all.

Air India’s woes were multiplied when they were slapped with $8.8 million penalty fee for 'tarmac delay' that is to be paid to the passengers. The US guideline states that if international flights’ passengers are onboard for more than four hours, the airline is liable to pay $27,500 per passenger onboard.

Air India, along with and the Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA) that represents private carriers (Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir), filed a plea in the Delhi High Court seeking modification of the court’s direction to DGCA on April 18 to not permit variations in FDTLs.

And the abovementioned incident was cited as an example in court during the hearing on 15 May.

"A diversion by its very nature is unscheduled -- diversion due to medical emergency or any other reason. In such cases unless dispensation (variation) is accorded, flights will be grounded and passengers put to untold hardships. This is not to mention the huge penalties involved," said an airline official.